The invention relates to an endoscope having two lenses formed at a distal end, said lenses being arranged offset with respect to one another for recording a stereoscopic image, and having an image recording chip, which is configured for electronically recording images captured by the lenses, wherein a mirror, movable between a first position and a second position, is provided in the distal end region, wherein, in the first position, an image captured by a first lens of the two lenses can be conducted onto the image recording chip and, in the second position, an image captured by a second lens of the two lenses can be conducted onto the image recording chip.
The invention furthermore relates to a method for recording at least one stereoscopic image by means of an endoscope.
In order to evaluate the images captured by the two lenses, previous proposals suggested guiding the optical beam paths through the endoscope tube and evaluating them separately at the proximal end.
Alternative proposals suggested using one image recording chip for both lenses, wherein different recording regions of the image recording chip are employed for respectively one lens. Here, each lens respectively only uses half of the recording surface of the image recording chip, which is disadvantageous in terms of the achievable image resolution.
There has also been a proposal to develop a prism which unifies the beam paths downstream of the lenses and which, by means of polarizable attachments—so-called optical or electronic shutters—is configured in such a way that the various beam paths can be switched off separately from one another. However, it was found that the use of such shutters leads to an undesirable reduction in the conducted luminous energy.